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Hockey Night in Canada
What is HNIC? Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) is a popular television program on the taxpayer funded CBC television network that shows NHL (National Hockey League) games on Saturday nights. How can the government fix this, the CBC is a company? The Government of Canada provides funding to the CBC. If the CBC does not meet reasonable terms funding can be cut. We believe the CBC will respond when properly motivated. Why is this an issue? Recently the CBC has made choices that restrict the access Canadians have to NHL games. The CBC has been excluding many Canadian markets and only showing one team and refusing to show the rest. As the CBC is the only broadcaster who can air games in Canada on Saturday nights many Canadian hockey fans do not get to see the game they want to see. In addition, with HDTV (high definition television) being widely adopted many Canadian hockey fans wish to see games broadcast in HD. The CBC has an HD channel on all major Canadian television systems but currently refuses to show any game that does not involve the Toronto Maple Leafs. We believe this is unacceptable and that the CBC should be broadcasting both HNIC games in HD. Solution * The CBC should be required to air every Canadian market team playing on Saturday night if only to the province or region of which that team is based. If the CBC declines to air the game, the CBC should be required to offer broadcast rights to other television networks thereby voiding the CBC's exclusive broadcast rights to games on Saturday night. * On the issue of HD broadcasts, the CBC should be required to air at least 50% of all HNIC games in HD. In addition, the CBC should be required to ensure that each team is allocated an reasonable share of games broadcast in HD. No team should have a percentage of games broadcast in HD greater than 25% than the lowest HD broadcast team. Questions * Why can't other networks broadcast games on Saturday. Who prevents them? * Do we have any statistics regarding how many watch, and which teams they would support? Category:Policy Don Cherry Notes Don Cherry is the host of Coach's Corner, the show between periods on Hockey Night in Canada. With his flamboyant suits and opinionated comments, he has become a symbol strongly attached to HNIC. Unfortunately, the Coach has repeatedly made rude remarks bordering on racism about French Canadian and European players. Don Cherry needs to apologize for this behaviour. The CBC should tell its star commentator to apologize and retract himself or else be fired. This should not be mistaken for coercion, since Cherry is being given an alternative, and if he doesn't like it, he can leave and vent his intolerance privately. His remarks are a pulsating stain to the credibility of Canadian public television. They certainly decrease viewership in Quebec, and contribute in no small way to the two solitudes, to say nothing of what European immigrants to Canada must feel. Cherry certainly does no service to federalism when young French Canadians hear what he has to say about them. More importantly, the CBC MUST take action to correct the situation because of what it would mean if it didn't: the CBC condones bigotry, and considers it acceptable to hold such discourse in a family environment. If Cherry himself is too obsessed with his stereotypes to change, the least the CBC can do is prevent children being indoctrinated with such nonsense. Children in the Muslim world are taught to hate Jews, Christians and the West generally, which indoctrination has been showed to instrumental to terrorists' recruitment efforts, as demonstrated by terrorism expert Stewart Bell of the National Post, in his book The Martyr's Oath. Will the CBC help foment divisions in Canada?